The present invention relates to a method for providing indicia to accurately identify an advertising signature for insertion into publications. In particular, the present invention relates to providing identifiers for printed advertisement forms that include a magazine name and magazine issue date.
Local advertising expenditures in the United States approached about 93 billion dollars in 2002. Newspapers captured about 41% of the market for such expenditures, while television captured about 18%, radio accounted for about 15%, Yellow pages attracted about 12%, other media captured about 12%, and national magazines garnered only about 2%.
Magazines are assembled in a bindery, and the binding type of a magazine determines the particular method used to bind the pages together. A xe2x80x9cperfectxe2x80x9d bound magazine is one in which the pages are collated consecutively and then glued along their spine. A cover is then wrapped around the spine. A xe2x80x9csaddlexe2x80x9d bound magazine is one in which the pages arc assembled by dropping them onto a chain line (explained below). The cover for a saddle-bound magazine is not wrapped but dropped around the pages and then stapled/stitched on the spine to hold the pages of the magazine together. Thus, saddle-bound magazines are assembled from the middle sections outward to the cover at the end of the process.
The printed pages of a magazine containing both content and advertisements are typically loaded into special bins at the bindery. A saddle production line includes a chain line, while a perfect-bound production line includes a belt-way, that travels beneath the bins. Each of the printed pages is dropped onto the chain line, or placed onto the belt-way, to accumulate the pages of a particular magazine. The pages of the magazine are aligned into a stack, trimmed to remove excess paper, and then bound.
A typical advertising signature is a sheet of paper that contains four full-page advertisements. The signature is folded in the middle, and a stack of such papers is placed into a particular bin so that the signature will be placed into the correct location within a magazine by the bindery. A signature is also known as a xe2x80x9cformxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cinsertxe2x80x9d.
There are various magazine page size attributes that are important for both printing and binding of magazines. The xe2x80x9cjogxe2x80x9d type of a magazine refers to how the printed pages are aligned by a bindery. The bindery machinery typically taps the accumulated pages at the xe2x80x9cheadxe2x80x9d (near the top of the page), or the xe2x80x9cfootxe2x80x9d (near the bottom of the page) in a manner similar to that used by a person to align a stack of sheets of paper. The xe2x80x9cmagazine trimxe2x80x9d dimensions pertain to the size of one page of a magazine, the xe2x80x9coff-press signature sizexe2x80x9d pertains to the size of a printed sheet including borders, and the xe2x80x9cdelivered to binderyxe2x80x9d size indicates the size of a sheet that includes margins or xe2x80x9clap areasxe2x80x9d after the sheet has been printed and trimmed in preparation for delivery to a bindery.
Identification information, sometimes called xe2x80x9clap markersxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9clap identifiersxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cspine markersxe2x80x9d are printed on each signature in the lap area, and are used by the bindery to sort the signatures for insertion into particular magazines. For a saddle-bound publication, the lap area is trimmed away after the magazine is assembled. When the inserts are delivered to a bindery, the lap marker is checked to identify the insert so that the advertisement pages can be placed in the correct bin for assembly of the magazine. For a perfect-bound publication, the lap area is located along the edge of the page that will be glued to the spine. Thus, a spine marker is printed in the lap area that will be ground during assembly of the magazines.
Magazine Advertising Service Companies offer publishers and advertisers magazine advertising marketing services to facilitate the production and delivery of advertising pages to be inserted into magazines. Such companies take advertisement orders, instruct printers to ensure that the advertisements are printed correctly, and coordinate with bindery companies so that the inserts for the magazines are timely delivered. These companies offer advertisers the opportunity to place local or regional advertisements in national magazines.
In order to offer advertisers such services in a cost effective manner, a Magazine Advertising Service Company groups national magazines sharing similar editorial/audience attributes into xe2x80x9cnetworksxe2x80x9d so that print efficiency can be achieved. Magazines in a particular network typically share similar demographics, and/or share similar editorial content.
On a monthly basis, a Magazine Advertisement Service Company may coordinate printing of advertisement pages and supply 8 to 24 million printed inserts to binderies. (The volume may vary depending on magazine subscription level and the amount of advertising pages sold in any particular month.) Due to the large amount of advertising pages, and the sometimes severe time constraints placed on a bindery to assemble the monthly magazines, bindery companies rely on receiving signatures that satisfy their requirements and that have easily discernable lap identifiers. However, signatures received from certain Magazine Service Companies have proven to be substandard and/or difficult to identify.
Accordingly, there is a need in the field to provide signatures that meet bindery requirements and that contain accurate identification information. The present invention addresses these problems.
The present invention provides methods for identifying advertising forms for insertion into various publications. In an implementation, the technique includes providing advertising forms with a lap area, and printing a lap identifier onto the lap area. The lap identifier includes at least one of a publication name and an issue code so that the advertising forms can be properly correlated with the publication.
The invention may include one or more of the following features. The technique may include printing a publication advertising service company identifier onto the lap area. The lap identifiers may further include at least one of a printer company identifier, a printing press output, a folio code, a market, a publication category designator, and the configuration of the advertising pages. The issue code may be a publication date of at least one publication. The advertising forms may have a larger size than that of the publication pages. The technique may include inserting the forms into a saddle-bound publication and trimming the lap area from the forms after assembly of the publication. The method may also include inserting the form into a perfect-bound publication and grinding off the lap area when the magazine is bound and assembled. The publication may be a magazine.
In another implementation, an advertising form for a publication includes a sheet that contains advertising information and which has a lap area. A lap identifier is printed on the lap area that includes at least a publication name and an issue code so that the form can be matched with the publication. The lap area is not discernable after assembly of the publication.
The advertising form may include one or more of the following features. The publication may be a magazine, and the identification indicia may include a publication advertising service company identifier. The identification indicia may include at least one of a printer company identifier, a printing press output, a folio code, a market, a publication category designator, and the configuration of the advertising pages The issue code may be a publication date of at least one publication. The advertising forms may have a larger size than that of the publication pages. The lap area may be trimmed from the sheet after the form is inserted into a saddle-bound publication, and the lap area may be ground away after the form is inserted and bound into a perfect-bound publication.
The technique and advertising form advantageously permits a bindery to quickly and accurately correlate advertising forms with the issue month of publications, and to correlate the advertising forms with the magazines geography or market. In addition, in an implementation, the lap identifiers provide other useful information. For example, the printer company and press run identifiers may be used to contact a printer in case there is a problem with the forms, or to check on the quality of that run of forms.
The details of one or more embodiments of the invention are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below. Other features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the detailed description and the drawings, and from the claims.